Mountaintop removal mining accounts for 60,000 cancer cases

As reported on the Huffington Post, a new study published in the Journal of Community Health estimates that mountaintop removal mining is responsible for 60,000 cancer cases among the 1.2 million Americans who live in counties where the destructive form of coal mining is practiced.

The study found that cancer rates in communities affected by mining was twice as high as in those with no mining, even after controlling for other health risks.

In exchange for 60,000 cancer cases, we get just 5-8 percent of the nation’s coal.

The new study comes on the heels of another by the same author that found “significantly higher” rates of birth defects in mining regions — data that the industry controversially dismissed by citing an old stereotype that Appalachians are inbred.

Michael Hendryx, the West Virginia researcher who produced both studies, has had 19 other papers on mountaintop removal mining published as well. He says the research has shown that living near an MTR project increases one’s risk of cancer, heart disease, lung disease and kidney disease. One of Hendryx’s studies also found higher poverty rates near the mining operations, which runs counter to the industry’s major talking point: jobs.